Why Get an Academic Therapist: Powerful Therapy and Tutoring

Therapy and Tutoring for Classroom test-taking anxiety

Many students have anxiety about test-taking.  In a lot of cases this means that the work they show under less pressures circumstances, like on classroom work and homework, is much better than what they show when formally tested in class.  This becomes a problem, given that much of the final grade can often be determined by the results of the tests.  Teachers may or may not be willing to weight non-test performance more heavily when they know that a test-taking problem is holding the student back from showing her or his best work.  Unfortunately, in most cases teachers will not apply different weights for different students, and in a lot of cases the teacher may even begin to believe that performance on the tests is actually a true measure of progress and potential.

A learning therapist can work well to combat test taking anxiety. The learning therapist uses tried and true cognitive techniques to help the student learn to relax and develop more positive “automatic” thoughts when entering a test-taking situation. Blocking out the usual negative thinking that may even be slightly less than conscious and replacing it with a more positive outlook is something many good therapists can do. Yet the added power and potential of combining therapy and tutoring allows the learning therapist to then actually help the student confront her or his fear in an actual test-taking environment that is part of the tutoring portion of the session. The learning therapist guides the student not only to make sure he or she is correctly approaching each problem in a simulated test-taking environment, but that the accompanying overall thoughts are positive and helpful.  Then the learning therapist might train a family member or a friend of the student to do the same type of thing at home in order to practice.

An Academic Therapist for Lack of Confidence

There are many reasons why children do or don’t develop confidence about their schoolwork and about learning in general.  Unfortunately many of these reasons are actually not directly related to a student’s actual potential to succeed. Therefore we often find that there are many students who do not believe in themselves even though they are far more capable than they think. Their lack of confidence creates a vicious cycle, where they either give up too early on academic problems fearing that they will not get them right, or turn away from opportunities to get extra help or learn new things because they’ve lost interest in learning.  Confidence is a key to successful learning, and a lack of confidence can often be grounded in factors that have nothing to do with ability.

The academic therapist works with the child using traditional psychotherapy designed to build confidence and self-esteem, and then immediately puts these techniques to practical use in the tutoring portion of the session. Using the actual subjects and assignments that the student has facing her or him now, the learning therapist helps the student see his or her true capability. The therapeutic tutor goes a step further as well, motivating the student to take the risk of trying – showing him or her that it is okay to put effort in even if there is a chance of failure. Many students with low motivation give up far too early, feeling that its better to fail on purpose than it is to fail after putting in your best effort. Once again the combination of therapy and tutoring that involves a learning experience that puts psychological techniques into practice can have powerful and lasting results.

A Learning Therapist for Attention Issues

An Academic Therapist for General Anxiety

Much of our anxiety revolves around negative thoughts that occur before and during a feared situation. Anxiety, after all, is grounded in feelings of helplessness. So a child prone to anxiety sits down at the beginning of the day and begins to think about how he or she might fail, whether because of messing up the directions, forgetting how to a tasks, or just making silly mistakes feels anxious. In turn, this anxiety fills a downward cycle, itself making the original fears come true.  Anxiety interferes with concentration and attention and this inhibits the student from showing her or his best work.  So suddenly we have a self-fulfilling prophecy, one that perhaps the student has experienced many times before.

The academic therapist works to understand exactly what negative thoughts, often called “automatic” thoughts since they come on so quickly and uncontrollably, the student is having. What exactly are the fears, again likely related to being helpless and not in control.  The student and the learning therapist work together to list a few of the more common negative and automatic thoughts, and they work out strategies to address them.

Traditional therapy would stop there, but since therapeutic tutoring involves a combination of advanced therapy and tutoring, they can immediately try out the new strategies through designing a simulated experience on material the child is learning now. The student and learning therapist can talk through and practice the new strategies in real-time.  And in the end of the therapy and tutoring session, they can make sure that the strategies work and will be effective back in the classroom.